i sat down on the bench at the bus stop on 24th and 3rd, next to a girl with a black long sleeve tshirt on in 93 degree sticky august weather. she looked about 17 years old, not much younger than i. i noticed her small, elegant fingers holding onto a black leather sketchbook and i found myself yearning to know what was inside of it.
i looked at her and smiled, commented on the weather;
"i would be sweating buckets if i were wearing that shirt."
she looked at me with such repugnance, it was as if i had told her that i killed her puppy and ate it for breakfast.
i looked away into the distance and watched the hustle and bustle of new york city on a tuesday. i held my gaze on a window of a large office building, 17 stories up and 4 across from the left. i imagined the cubicles; small, cramped and disgustingly humid, and the people inside of them; lonely, fed up and hungry.
"i would love to not be wearing this shirt. unfortunately my skin isn't pure and unmarked like yours."
the girl stood up, and looked at me with such sadness in her eyes that i could not unsee them. she walked down 24th towards the subway. she left her leather sketchbook sitting beside me, an unopened treasure chest full of unknown secrets and dreams.
i watched the girl walk with her arms crossed, bag thrown over one shoulder down the street, expecting her to turn around realizing what she had left behind - but she didn't. she kept walking and walking and walking until i could not longer see anything more than a small black dot.
i was brought back when i heard the large bus screech and halt to a stop, the black woman driving stare at me as if she had been waiting three and a half years for me to get on the bus. i picked up the black sketchbook and climbed the steps, popping $2.75 into the fare box.
i sat down in an empty middle seat, and leaned my head against the hot window. i felt the sun beam down on my face through the plexi-glass as i looked down at the black leather sketchbook still in my hands. i found myself holding it as if it were a very important document given to me by a secret agent to bring to the CIA.
i made it home to my stuffy one bedroom apartment with the sketchbook still unopened, still in careful hands. i set it down on my kitchen counter beside my yellow sticky note to pick up eggs, ketchup and lemon juice. which i forgot. again. i stared at the beautiful black leather of the sketchbook for a good ten minutes before finally flipping the cover to reveal two words, written with pencil in the most beautiful calligraphy i have ever seen;
"tragically beautiful"
i was so taken aback by the juxtaposition of these two simple words that i wished i had never opened the book at all, but somehow i felt myself flipping page after page looking at sketches drawn by an amazing talent whom i don't even know the name of.
i sat down at my desk after analyzing each and every sketch and put a fresh piece of paper into my typewriter. i entitled it
"tragically beautiful.

scars do not make an individual beautiful. scars simply add to the tragedy of the beauty shown by that individual. tragedy and beauty are two things that can not seem to be more opposed to each other, but somehow they can not exist without one another."

i wanted so desperately to know how to reach this girl, and tell her to wear her smallest tank top. i wanted her to know that her scars did not have to be covered up by unforgiving cotton. i wanted her to realize that her tragedies don't define her beauty.
her sketchbook is still beside my typewriter, bringing me back to that day on the bench.
if only she knew how impure and marked up my skin really is, that would truly be,
tragically beautiful.

immensity scares me.

some nights I will dream of being lost in the ocean, seeing nothing but immense bodies of water for hundreds of thousands of miles.

I will wake up in one swift breath to an empty bed and remember that you aren't there.

the immensity of that statement is enough to make me lean over the porcelain bowl and rid myself of missing you.

you make me write half-finished poems.
you fill my head with juxtaposition.

you feel like a black hole that I keep reaching into to find something that I lost long ago.

I seem to keep trying to fit the whole ocean into one dusty old wine bottle, although I know it is physically impossible.

I know one day the glass will shatter.

a million shards, cutting flesh and spilling feelings.

I do not want you.
I want him.

I want everything he has and I want him so immensely that his immensity doesn't scare me.

he doesn't scare me like you do.
he comforts me in every way possible.

and I love him.
not you;
never you.

all I seem to write about is you

you, with your big smile
big attitude
big personality
big heart

and all I can do is love you
I never want this to end

I'm so in love with you that my heart races with every kiss you lay on my lips
my neck
my pulse quickens
with your voice
your scent
your breath

I love you.
you feel like he did.
but a thousand times better.

I love you.

it's a big world
and i'm such a tiny person

and then there is you,
and you are so big and magnificent
the moon envy's your beauty

he gives me butterflies the size of pterodactyls.
he makes me feel as if my name is safe within his lungs.
I don't know how to explain it, but there's something about him.
how cliche, I know.
but I love the way he breathes.
the way he holds his cigarette.

it didn't scare me when he told me he loved me after barely 3 weeks.
he was 16 drinks in, babbling, slurring.
but when he said it, he spoke so clearly.
sober thoughts.

I've never seen someone look at me like they've been waiting for me their whole life.

but his eyes have a certain innocence in them, and he can't hide from it.

his laughter whispers love letters.
the wind picks up his scent.

just how crazy young love can be.

somehow, I wish he were my first.
I wish I had never had feelings for anyone else,
because I have wasted feelings on other men when he deserves all of it.
all of me.

when I die, I want them I dust off my heart.
and only find his fingerprints.

A small girl came up to me today.
She looked up at me with her big, blue, honest eyes and simply said;
"Hi, can I ask you something?"
She didn't even give me time to respond before asking, quite matter-of-factly,
"What does love mean to you?"

Well, I guess I had to think about that one.
"Trust." I said.
"Love, to me. Means trusting that your love for others will be taken care of with careful hands."
She looked up at me, not knowing at all what I meant. She just told me,
"Thank you miss." and walked back to the playground.

I found myself thinking about what this little girl had asked me. And I found myself thinking, I am so dumb.

Love is a lot of things. Love is a color. Love is a type of dessert. Love is sweet as ice cream, and it can be just as cold. Love is the scars on my wrists, and love is the bruises on my knees.
Love is the way the sun shines on every single one of us. There isn't a person that the sun refuses to shine on, so, I guess love is honesty? I don't really know.
But I know our love was infinite. We lived in infinity for a year and three days. Our love was also tears at 3am, and 9 hour phone calls with no sleep.
Our love was no secrets, we learned to spell love as Y-O-U and never as I-O-U. Your love never owed me anything. My love never stopped giving.
Love is non-judgmental.
Love is blind.
Love is deaf, love is irresponsible.

Second loves, are different.
Second loves are awkward, because they try to fit themselves in places where only the first loves should fit.
He tried to fit his kneecaps behind mine, but they weren't shaped the same as yours. My body before you hadn't been, imprinted. But the first time we spooned, yes, I just said spooned, your kneecaps created crevasses in the bends of mine. So when he tried to fit his fingers in the spaces between my own, I think he found your fingerprints still etched where they should have been washed away long ago.

Love, is a crack in the sidewalk.
Love turns your heart stone cold.
Love loves to see you suffer, and love loves the see you go through all the pain of broken-ness.

Be careful who you give your love to.
Be careful whose hands you drop your heart into, because some hands are too big and too strong and too unforgiving to hold your heart with the tenderness and care that it deserves.
Love will kick you in the stomach, and stab you in the back. Love will twist your words, love will make you lie.

Love is a pen and piece of paper.
Love is in every poem that I write.
Love is words, that sink into your blood and travel through your arteries.
Words that make your heart pump.
Love is your heartbeat.

Today, I walked up to a little ******* a playground.
I asked her, "What does love mean to you?"

And she replied, with absolutely no hesitation.
"Love is how when you fall off the monkey bars, you get back up and try again. Because even though I keep falling, I really wanna get to the other side."

I used to keep my poems a secret.
I guess I still kinda do.
But I keep them to share with you.

Because, you
listen.
There isn't a word I can't say.
There isn't a sentence I can't string together
even if it sounds like nails on a chalkboard
you listen.

There's a way you look at me.
When I speak these words,
I swear
you look straight into my soul.
Like you know what I'm about to say, and you understand.

There's a way you touch me.
When I practice in the mirror, shouting out the same line over and over and over
trying to make it sound like I didn't write it when I was drunk.
You touch me with your fingertips and spell out the words as I speak them, as if
you don't want me to forget what comes next.

There's a way you hold me.
Like you're holding a dictionary whose binding has come loose.
As if when you let me go, I will breakdown into a million words.
A puddle of mismatched letters on the floor.

Because that's all I seem to be.
A ticking time bomb of words.
And sometimes, they don't come out just right.
I say the wrong thing with the right intentions.
I say black but I'm thinking white.

Your patience, is more than a virtue.

Cause there's a way I look at you.
When you paint, I look at you as if you already are the painting.

When I touch you, I touch you as if I will smudge you.
Smudge the perfectly placed shadowing that God seemed to shape with his fingers.

When I hold you.
I hold you like you are the Mona Lisa, and I am the Louvre.

Because that's what you seem to be.
One of the worlds wonders.
Worth more than anyone could ever put a price on.

And as you paint my words into your pictures, I will write your paintings into my poems.